Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Day 38 –Lady Evelyn Falls to High Level

Today’s Mileage 220
Miles to Date 33576

Miles Remaining 5956

We continued our back tracking today and are now back in High Level, Alberta. High Level is a good place to spend the night as there is free WiFi at the Best Western, free overnight parking at the Tourist Information Center and a place to refuel the coach with diesel at the Petro-Canada Card Lock Station. One can use the Pacific Pride cards at Petro-Canada Card Stations in Canada. These stations are more plentiful and designed for truck refueling making it easy to maneuver a motor home and toad in and out. Plus an added advantage is that there are no international transaction fees that would be accessed using credit cards. Pacific Pride sends an electronic bill at the end of the month to be paid by check that I can queue electronically online.

We did save a couple of points of interest to stop at along our back track portion of the trip. On the way up we skipped Hay River Alexandra Falls and Twin Falls. Both falls are close together so we opted for Alexandra Falls as the falls are the higher of the two. The Dene of this region calls Alexandra Falls “Hatto deh Naili” a place of power protected by the spirits. The falls cut through rock that dates back 400 million years.

Approximately 11,000 years ago the last glacier (Al Gore take note, the global warmer period that we are now in started over 75,000 years ago) retreated leaving a large lake reaching from Great Bear Lake to Athabasca. Evidence of this former lake can be seen in sand and gravel beach ridges, found on the east side of the Hay River. As the level of the lake fell, the Hay River was forced to adapt and began to cut into bedrock which was soft, and easily eroded. Alexandra Falls formed where the river flowed over resistant limestone.

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Hay River Before Falls


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Forest Floor by Hay River

 

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